Well, in 24 hours from now the Mueller report will have been released and rapidly dissected by partisans (especially those in the media charading as objective journalists), it will have been churned over on TV news for many hours, it will have been read and dissected in hastily prepared written pieces and of course, on Twitter it will have been spun continuously for almost an entire day. In the Twitter universe, that’s enough time for several complete spin cycles to launch, peak, be upended by a competing spin narrative, so who knows what the smart takes will be by this time in the wee hours of Friday morning.
Where would American politics be without the Twitter political forum to spin the news for us…
How people view Trump/Russian collusion probably rests on, not just partisanship, but on what parts of the past two years worth of spin people believe. In fact, many anti-Trump people, especially those who follow the anti-Trump media and believe it, will walk away believing Trump got away with being a Russian agent, no matter what facts the Mueller report finds.
On the Left, many anti-Trumpers have bought into the mountains of anti-Trump spin, which were rapidly spun by the mainstream media, before going down in flames within 24-48 hours, as the stories fell apart. Many people ran with the pants on fire initial reporting and never paid attention to the debunking of those stories.
On the Right, many of the MAGA Trump followers believe all of the Trump and Fox News spin, which casts Trump as the perennial victim of dastardly Leftists. These people ignore facts, whenever they get in the way of Trump as the victim spin and they conveniently disregard all the disturbing Trump behavior, like the petty name-calling, the impulsive policy shifts that leave his own staff scrambling to figure out what he meant, his fawning over the world’s despots and his relentless lying.
My prediction is that not much will change in this entrenched domestic spin information war. Each side will pick and choose bits and pieces to bolster their spin narrative and each side will disregard any parts in the report that don’t bolster their beliefs about Trump/Russian collusion.
I won’t be watching TV news, or be on Twitter or blogging tomorrow… but I might start reading the report, well maybe. I am busy working on my cross-stitch lately.
Finished the Russian dolls piece – cute. Sorry for the crooked picture, but I really am terrible at taking photos and even worse at trying to edit them (psst, I put in a corrected photo, because I noticed in rotating the photo thing, I had flipped the sides of the photo – the little Cossack is on the left, not the right):
Finished stitching another one of those small, tedious Spring kits:
I also have a bunch of Christmas clearance cross-stitch kits too, so I started a Christmas bunny kit the other day. Still have some back-stitching to do to finish it. I hate stitching on the 18 count Aida cloth that comes in these kits, because even with my magnifying lamp and my glasses, it’s a struggle for me to count the squares:
I also started stitching another small kit that I bought last summer when my husband was in the hospital. I took a trip to a Joann’s store to get a break from the hospital… and bought two more cross-stitch kits.
I love bunnies, btw… So, I have two more of these bunny Christmas kits with different bunny pictures…
And I have this Liberty Bell project too, but that one’s a struggle trying to work on with all the interruptions here, when my husband needs help getting to the bathroom, needs his meals, etc. These small projects are easy to pick up and stitch a bit, throughout the day.
Yes, it’s probably better to plan for small doses of news today and plan on “reading the actual report”. Most of the media blathering on won’t read the report, but they will be touted as having the smart takes on it.
libertybelle diaries 
Good cautionary post LB, I particularly enjoyed seeing such a title on the very first thing (even before I’ve had my coffee) I landed on before venturing out into the wider spinned world.
In the normal world such as ourselves inhabit (I hope I’m not seeming too *expertish* putting it that way) nobody would venture an opinion either way until about a week after the report’s becoming available: read, studied, and digested – I’m tempted to add a fourth step in this case, if only because I fully expect even having digested the thing we ought probably allow our “biases colon” to fully pass all the fibrous bits leaving only the golden bits to be absorbed into our body-politic. … (Thinking about it further I’m thinking it may even be the wiser course to add even a fifth step – scrubbing our toilet bowls so that when visitors come to visit – our facilities should be free of the bullshit we’ve subjected our analytical digestive systems to.)
I’m certain though in the media-world we inhabit it ain’t gonna be that way. Matter of fact what I actually expect is that by the time the media’s read the title page we’ll have been bombarded by *experts* who’ve not even paused to wash their hands.
Watch out for yourself LB. “Cholera zone” ahead.
Whew. Good thing I hit the ‘Post Comment’ button when I did as C-Span opened the Barr presentation at 0934.
Only thing I would have changed about the timing was my not having my coffecup with me as I made my way to the tv.
Lol, JK. I rushed my post in the middle of the night, while half-asleep… I posted an unintentionally altered photo of my Russian dolls cross-stitch piece. I was trying to “edit” the photo to straighten the image, but, well… it flipped the left and right sides of the photo. I need to invest in a decent camera and practice a lot, because my photos are truly awful.
I did turn on the TV to watch Barr’s statement, while working on finishing the back-stitching of my bunny Christmas ornament. Seemed like a pretty definitive conclusion on “Trump/Russian collusion”, so that spin narrative can be retired for now.
However, the thing about the Dem spin narrative writers is they can be counted on to “go green” and dedicatedly “recycle” old spin dirt and smears. “Russian collusion”, with its two-year success rate at inflicting damage on Trump, hamstringing his presidency and dominating the media spin cycle, will certainly be “upcycled” (rewritten) into another spin narrative. Many of the Dem spin narratives have been the same-old recycled smears since the 90s, so political analysts should recognize when these spin attacks launch… but most just mindlessly report them as factual reporting…
Have a good day JK,
“Go green” huh?
Apt. Makes me confident now Pennsylvania borned gals know their way around barnyards.
Don’t have to be concerned with crooked photos where I’m concerned LB, the way my desk is laid out I sit a little cock-eyed anyway.
You have a good day too LB.
seeing as how you enjoy ‘crafting’ …
https://woodsrunnersdiary.blogspot.com/2019/04/how-to-cut-quill-pen.html
Thanks, JK! This is information I could have used decades ago, when in my early teens I was actually messing around trying to make my own quill pens and writing with them, lol. It’s hilarious you knew this would be something that would interest me.
Who me? lol
Well tell the truth I tried doing the same thing myself. Unfortunately I hadn’t a clue to know to make that little cut (nib?) vertically into the quill part.
But reason I came back to here is just to let you know, for the purposes of your lately blogging posts you can probably skip Andy McC’s podcast. Its interesting to me only in that it’s “details of law” but I don’t think you’ll get a post out of it. But here’s the link just so you can hear the opening bit in case you doubt my instincts:
https://www.nationalreview.com/podcasts/the-mccarthy-report/episode-43-let-the-fighting-commence/
I figure ten minutes in you’ll know I saved you 30 minutes!
(Now go post about making a quill pen!)
Thanks, JK, I’m 28 minutes in – haven’t heard anything unexpected yet.
I’m actually re-considered LB. I think, though you’re unlikely to get a post it’ll still be helpful for your understanding to study what was said.
It is about, afterall, the Constitution.
You worry sometimes LB you have no readers. No influence. I can assure you you do:
https://thehill.com/opinion/cybersecurity/440813-as-russians-prepare-for-2020-election-scrutiny-of-facebook-and-social
Well, doubt this guy was paying attention to me, JK. Anyone who paid attention during the Cold War should understand how the Russians’ spy games and influence operations work. It’s always amazed me how so many of the policy “experts” did a complete internal memory erasure of Soviet spycraft, after 1991. It was like groupthink wishful thinking robbed them of any historical insights on Russia.
I retweeted this link with a couple comments attached, but Kim Strassel is asking some of the right questions about the Steele dossier. Of course there are a few more questions I would ask about the Steele dossier. Were there conversations between Steele, GPS Fusion AND Clinton operatives, Cody Shearer and Sid Blumenthal? Why did the Shearer dossier “echo” (that was the word used in a spin media report hyping it) the Steele dossier?
I suspect Steele got some bits of Russian dirt (perhaps Kremlin disinformation) and once the Clinton operatives got that from Steele they ran with it, embellishing and using it as their starting point theme, from which they concocted the Trump/Russian collusion EPIC SPIN smear campaign.
It’s how their smear campaigns work – they get a small whiff of dirt and then they embellish and reshape that into a full-blown SPIN epic, replete with phased roll-outs on new themes and plot twists to keep the smear effort blazing across the media. They also recycle through old themes, by rewriting them with “new sources” (same as the old ones -FAKE) and/or tidbits of supposed new information (usually false). It’s an endless circle of media manipulation to incite immediate political action, which they are always driving with these smear campaigns.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-russians-and-the-dossier-11556232721?shareToken=st05b24cba232b4844a52edcf0eeb83b7f
https://www.c-span.org/video/?459922-1/william-barr-testifies-mueller-report-senate-judiciary-committee
There’s a break sometime in … the sworn part of the testimony resumes just after the 2:54 mark.
I watched the hearing today, JK – was just getting ready to attempt a short blog post on my takeaways. Hirono was a disgrace with her prepared smear spin statement, I’ll state that upfront as the worst moment, but back to writing, lol.
JK, Hillary is out front leading the preemptive spin attack on Barr, in an effort to shape the narrative of the IG report into the Clinton email investigation as another “witch hunt”. She was on Maddow tonight – just saw this tweet with a video: